Bewick, Sharon

Macauley, Matthew

Tsiorintsoa, Sandra A.

English

ISU ReD: Research and eData

Presentation for the Symposium on BEER November 2023Distinguishing community assembly through functionalredundancy models.Sandra A. Tsiorintsoa1,*, Sharon Bewick2, Matthew Macauley11Department of Mathematics & Statistical Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 296342Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634stsiori@clemson.eduSimplified habitat complexity leads to a decrease in biodiversity. For instance, when we opt for less diversediets, we reduce the range of chemicals available to our gut microbes, resulting in lower diversity and po-tentially harming our digestive health. Similarly, monoculture farming, instead of polyculture, reduces theavailability of nutrients to soil microbes, leading to soil fertility loss. Functional redundancy, which refers tothe number of species performing a specific function in a community, is crucial for ecosystem stability. How-ever, the impact of habitat simplicity on functional redundancy remains unclear. To address this question,we used a metacommunity framework to create models that explore how functional redundancy changes withecosystem complexity under two community assembly scenarios: environmental filtering and niche partition-ing. We derived analytical approximations for these models, when all taxa use the same number of resourcesand that all resources are used by the same number of species. In the environmental filtering model, speciesin the local community survive by finding the necessary resources. In contrast, the niche partitioning modelinvolves species in the local community competing for resources while also meeting their persistence require-ments. Our findings from the environmental filtering model suggest that functional redundancy remainsconstant concerning local habitat complexity. However, in the niche partitioning scenario, we observe thatfunctional redundancy increases as local habitat complexity rises. This leads to a testable hypothesis thatcan be compared with empirical data in systems where redundancy can be assessed across communities withvarying resource complexity.

Distinguishing community assembly through functional redundancy models.

https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1780&context=beer

Distinguishing community assembly through functional redundancy models.

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ISU ReD: Research and eData